deshita | y.ji

five.

The awkwardness one feels in hearing a friend's parents argue no longer existed for the both of you. Or, well, it no longer existed for Jeongin, since your parents' relationship was obviously way worse than his own's.

The walls were thin between the apartments. However, whether you could hear each other through the thin layer still depended on how close the rooms were. One of the bathrooms in your apartment was located right next to Jeongin's bedroom. It was the one that you used. The walls were not so thin that he could hear you shower or do your daily routine in there, but he could hear you if you speak above a certain volume or start singing like nobody was listening because the rooms were so close together.

The first time he revealed to you that he has been able to hear you sing in the shower was many years back. You had escaped to the bathroom, for some reason, to hide from your arguing parents. To you, your bedroom had felt too open and easy to access. It was an unknocked door away from the outside world. You did not want your parents to barge in and include you in their conversation, so you locked yourself in the bathroom to hideaway.

Jeongin had heard you that night. Taking off his earphones and turning off the music in his phone, he sat on the laundry corner of his room and awkwardly comforted you through the wall. Putting a hand to the wall, he could almost feel the sensation of your palm reaching for his hand.

That was a long time ago. Ever since then, he has taken the job to be there for you whenever your parents start to fight each other, like a friend over the wall. What started as a wall-blocked conversation soon turned into sudden neighbor visits, and now friendly sleepovers whenever it was needed.

"You really don't have to lend me your bed, you know?" You said as you kicked your feet against the edge of Jeongin's tidy bed, your eyes peering down at him laying out a mattress on the floor.

He furrowed his brows as he looked up and fixated his gaze at you. "Who said I am sleeping on the floor?"

You gave him a soft kick on his back when you scoffed. After that, you made it your task for the night to get comfortable with the way Jeongin's bed feels. You spread your torso across the length of the bed, feeling the cold surface of the blanket on your skin. The freshness glided across you, and the artificial smell of detergent his family used was both new and familiar.

This bedroom was your second home. You have been in here countless times, whether it was just to stay over for a bit or to stay the night. It has changed drastically over the years as well; the gradual progress of Jeongin's maturity could be seen developed in the way he decorated his room. Shelves full of comic books and figurines, a messy corner of dirty laundry that matched his colorful wardrobe, a whiteboard calendar that has no dates but only the drawn cartoons plastered by his friends.

He laid his life within these walls, you would say, from the presence of all the people around him to the ever-growing control his personality has on him.

And one of the most prominent things he has covering to all ends of his room was you. They were things you noticed, things he kept hidden, and things none of you could remember.

There was the hoodie you left in his room during a sleepover and somehow never remember to take back despite both of your constant reminders. It sat with the rest of the unwashed laundry, you had no plans to take it back yet. There were those poorly drawn birthday cards you stopped giving him after turning ten or so, he thoughts. They were stuffed carefully inside a present box which was in turn placed to the back of his closet on the floor, hidden from plain sight. And there were all the uglily folded clothes in the cabinets that everyone knew has to be your doing but never really think too much about. They were just clothes folded differently.